


Dirge for the Unsinging Throats

by Viemars



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Bittersweet, Evolution, Gen, Motherhood, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-23
Updated: 2012-06-23
Packaged: 2017-11-08 09:17:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/441630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viemars/pseuds/Viemars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shepard was pregnant when the the Normandy SR-1 was attacked. When she awoke, she knew two things: Time had passed, and she was empty.</p><p>She hadn't even one moment to rest. As soon as she was awake, she was on her feet with a gun in her hands. <i>It will never be any different for me,</i> she thought. <i>These hands have taken so many lives that they wouldn't know how to nurture it.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Dirge for the Unsinging Throats

_Transcript: Recording, dated October 3rd 2186, recovered from a damaged combat hardsuit found in the Citadel wreckage. There is some static, then a female voice speaks._

_[INAUDIBLE] --on't know if any-- [STATIC] –haps one day someone might find this recording. I am in the Crucible itself. I have [AUDIO CORRUPTED] –th it, and I know I won't be leaving this place alive. So, for what it's worth, this is the last will and testament of Comman-- [INAUDIBLE] –ard, Alliance Navy._

*

"You do not know the privilege of being a mother," Benezia said to her. "There is power in creation."

Benezia had been right at the time; Shepard had been naive in those young days. She had learned lessons about being a mother later, but not from Benezia; they were more like those from the Rachni Queen, antennae twitching in the tank. She was a mother whose children were lost.

Unplanned pregnancy was unlikely in the 2180s, but when one beats the odds professionally, it is easy to get careless.

Shepard looked in the mirror and saw raw life kindling inside her. The positive test had been the first and last stage of metamorphosis; painful and confusing at first, but then endowing her with a new state of being.

She didn't dare tell anyone about it. She knew that a blast in the field would knock the pregnancy from where it stirred between her hips. If that happened, she would grieve alone, and not burden her crewmates with the idea that their commander was only a fragile human. Of course, that was the deepest secret of her life.

*

When the blast came, it wasn't even in the field, but in the Normandy, the closest thing she ever had to a home. She had put the last crew member aboard his escape shuttle and the hull of her ship was sloughing away around her; these things had been her anchor. Now the anchor was gone, and she was set adrift into space.

The breach in her armour was tiny, but it was big enough that the vacuum dragged the air from her lungs, folding them in on themselves.

When she awoke, she knew two things: Time had passed, and she was empty.

She hadn't even one moment to rest. As soon as she was awake, she was on her feet with a gun in her hands. _It will never be any different for me,_ she thought. _These fingers have taken so many lives that they wouldn't know how to nurture it._

*

"You're very wise for one so young, Shepard," Eve said to her, much later, with the gentle beeping of the machines in the medical bay the only sound around them. The SR-2 was full of sleeping people, but neither of them were restful tonight, and they had found each other.

Shepard looked up from her datapad, managing a smile. "Thank you."

Eve continued in a low voice. "We have to be good to ourselves if we can, you and I. We don't only fight for the people who are gone and the ones who still live. We mustn't forget those who were never born. The lungs that never drew breath at all. Shepard, there can be nothing so final as holding your stillborn baby and knowing that this is the nearest you will ever come to love in this unthinkably empty galaxy."

Shepard said nothing in response. There was nothing she could say without giving away that deepest secret.

*

When the rachni queen was trapped again, Shepard found her again, deep in the catacombs. "We are the last queen," she hissed through the mouths of the dead krogan around her. "We listen for the children. They are silent."

Shepard gazed up at her. She must be so ancient. She knew the privilege of being a mother, as Benezia had said. "The machines came," the rachni queen went on. "They heard our song."

Ancient, and embedded in a universe that was filled with music. Because of the Reapers, her children would never sing. Shepard tried not to be angry. It made her irrational, and she needed a clear head. She tried. But even Commander Shepard couldn't succeed at everything.

*

EDI only asked difficult questions. Shepard wouldn't have it any other way. But accosting her as she was passing through the bridge and expecting her to clarify the purpose of synthetic life was a new one.

"A free-willed synthetic chooses what it wants," Shepard replied absently, linking an OSD up to a terminal and scanning through for the data she was looking for.

"But the purpose of organic life is to preserve itself long enough to replicate copies of its genes in succeeding generations. My purpose is not so clear." EDI responded. Shepard's hands paused over the terminal. It was an unexpected reaction, this way her chest constricted and her heart thundered, this way she felt the keen emptiness.

EDI was wrong. That couldn't be all there was to organic life. Surely she had not failed so completely at the one thing she was meant for.

 _It will never be any different for me,_ she thought again. _I only exist for taking life._

"Reproduction isn't all there is," Shepard said, trying to convince herself as well as EDI, keeping her weakness out of her voice, keeping her deepest secret, as always. "We find meaning in the work we do, good deeds we accomplish, love..."

Later that night, in her cabin, Shepard fed her fish. Traynor had offered to install an automatic care system in the aquarium, but this was the one time that she sustained life rather than took it, and she would not relinquish that. She savoured opening the panel, looking down into the water, feeling the papery flakes drop away from her fingertips. She watched the fish rise in the water to consume the food, and she repeated what she had said to EDI in her mind, repeated it over and over again. She would find meaning in her work. In her good deeds. In love. She had no shortage of any of those things. They would be enough. They would be enough.

*

A soldier always had small injuries, but normally the medigel kept them at bay in the field. The dispenser system in her hardsuit was burned out, though, and the tear from where the Reaper's main gun had glanced her screamed with heat and pain.

Her ears were ringing. War was loud, and her life had been loud for so long that she forgot what silence was like. She thought of the rachni queen, alone in a world that should be full of music. The silence of this place, too, was complete.

 _The final stage of evolution._ Her mind echoed with the words she had heard moments ago. Who knew that was even possible? If EDI had been right, the only purpose of life, the drive to reproduce and advance the species, would be gone. But maybe there really could be more. She had convinced EDI to live for goodness and love. Maybe the galaxy could, as well. And Shepard would be the mother delivering a whole new condition of life. Maybe she was too naive, as she had been many times before. But she had never stopped fighting. She had never stopped believing the best of people. She woudn't stop now.

"Do I have time?" she asked, out loud.

"Not long. Your war will end, one way or another." The response came.

But she had a few moments, surely. It would be enough. She recorded a message, and when she was done, she threw down her pistol and ran.

As she sank into the torrent of light, she spread her hands out in front of her. She smiled and felt her very last heartbeats. She had assumed she would die fighting. That her last moments would only be a moment of failure in her dogged determination to kill. But she had been wrong. There was something in her that could nurture life rather than take it. She wasn't empty, now; she was full of light.

*

_Obviously everything I own should be property of the crew of the Normandy, SR-1 and SR-2, past and present. Ensure that the galaxy cares for them well, because they're heroes. I was the poster girl for this war, but they were no less instrumental in saving you all._

_But that's... that's not what this is about. I just want to make myself clear. I [AUDIO CORRUPTED] to win this war for all people, but that idea is a little too abstract sometimes; when you're under fire, your shields are down, and you [STATIC] not making it out alive, it takes something a little more real and immediate to keep you fighting. And I didn't keep fighting, in those moments, for 'all people'. I kept fighting for one person. One I never even met._

_That's all. I should... I should get going. Shepard out._


End file.
